


All Before and After

by tayttimus



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Snacking, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Panic Emotional Support, The Author Does Not Condone Eating In Bed, soft and warm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24371449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tayttimus/pseuds/tayttimus
Summary: Maybe Donghyuck can’t say what he needs, but Mark probably knows already anyway.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 4
Kudos: 147





	All Before and After

Mark arrives home after meeting Jaehyun for some basketball with Jeno and Chenle to a starkly quiet apartment. By this time of day the walls normally ring with Donghyuck’s shouts of outrage as he, Taeyong and Johnny play through more rounds of whatever game together than their collective patience can usually take.

Tonight, however. Tonight, Mark comes home to the PC turned off, the lights dark, and soft, hitching sobs leaking out of the bedroom through the crack in the door. 

His heart draws him to the bedroom, but his head and past experience bring him first to the kitchen. He pours a big glass of water, grabs painkillers from on top of the fridge, and snatches a bag of chocolate covered almonds from the cupboard above the sink. 

By the time he makes it down the hall to the bedroom, the breathing within has reached a violent fever pitch, rapid and unforgiving.

“Hyuck-ah,” Mark says quietly to announce himself at their door, “babe, hey.” He steps through quietly, leaving the door open just a bit wider behind him.

From the mess of blankets on the bed, Donghyuck writhes, and the sobs come louder and more strained as he tries to respond. Placing the glass and other provisions on the end table, Mark sits in the space Donghyuck’s curved form makes on the bed and places a hand in his peripheral vision. ”Hi, love,” says Mark, above the growing hysteria that shakes through Donghyuck. “I’m here, baby, it’s okay.”

The sheets under Donghyuck’s face are stained with tears, the curve of his cheeks no better by comparison, and it all comes to nothing when Donghyuck furiously rubs his face onto the mattress before reaching and clutching desperately at Mark’s hand. He presses it to his brow, almost painfully, and cries. He cries in heaving, shaky sobs, the ones that take more than one breath to get through properly, the ones that leave your mouth hanging open long enough for saliva to gather and pool and fall in bubbly strings from your lips.

Mark lets it all happen, keeping his hand squeezing in a slow, soothing rhythm, but otherwise leaving his boyfriend untouched. The desire to comfort through contact aches in him, like it always does, but he keeps the rhythm with his hand and counts the seconds idly in his head.

Seventy-three of them pass before Donghyuck’s sobs become whines, and his breathing evens into something that less resembles the way a weathervane spins in a tornado. It’s still staccato and sharp, but Donghyuck’s chest rises and falls like the tide hits the shore; hard, irregular, but revolving all the same. He lets out a shaky sigh, and nuzzles his forehead against the back of Mark’s hand.

“Hey there, Sunshine,” Mark whispers, and gives in to the ache that thrums in his chest. He kicks off his sneakers and toes off his socks before crawling onto the bed, under the covers, and excavating Donghyuck in them to wrap around him like a blanket drawn across his shoulders. Donghyuck is still in his sleep shirt and his boxers, and Mark is probably still a little bit gross from basketball, but they ease against each other. “You’re okay,” says Mark evenly, “you’re okay.”

Donghyuck sobs once or twice more, then twists around in Mark’s grasp to tuck himself under Mark’s chin. “Mmhm,” Donghyuck hums, nodding microscopically. He still shakes with the leftover tremors of his tears.

Mark taps his back twice before leaning away. “Here, Hyuck-ah. Off with this, please,” he asks, already pulling at his t-shirt by the back of the collar to remove it.

Donghyuck pulls his arms inside his sleep shirt like a turtle hides its head in its shell, and pulls the shirt off over his head to be thrown into the far corner of their room. When Mark, similarly divested of shirt, lies on his back and pats his chest twice in invitation, Donghyuck crawls over like a drowning man finally reaching shore. He drapes himself over Mark, pressing his nose to Mark’s neck and curling a knee over his hips. When Mark begins to stroke his fingers up and down the knobs of Donghyuck’s spine, only then does Donghyuck truly go boneless with one last shuddering sigh.

They lay like that for some time. Mark doesn’t check the clock, and Donghyuck’s breathing irons itself into long, slow, sleepy breaths. Mark knows that Donghyuck is not fully asleep just yet, but he elects to let the silence carry on, playing a tune only he can hear on the keys of Donghyuck’s spine.

Donghyuck twitches, then presses a featherlight kiss to Mark’s neck.

“Hi, baby.”

Another kiss, in the shape of a smile. “Hi.” It’s a little hoarse, a little dry.

“Can you sit up and drink some water for me?”

“Mm,” Donghyuck hums, already most of the way upright. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Hair mussed in the dark of their apartment, Donghyuck still looks like a cherub, beautiful and lovely with his eyes puffy and his face smeared with tears, snot and drool. He takes the painkillers Mark places in his open palm, and downs them with a few healthy gulps of water.

He watches Mark place the half-finished glass back on the bedside table and Donghyuck reaches weakly as he lets himself collapse back onto Mark’s chest. He wiggles his fingers at the chocolate. “You brought me almonds,” he says, not a question, just a statement filled with fondness.

“Sure did. I know you cry yourself to dehydration, so I figured sugar might be a good idea after some water as well.”

Donghyuck rubs his cheek on Mark’s collarbone. “I love you,” he says on a sigh.

With a chuckle, Mark kisses the crown of Donghyuck’s head, in such easy reach. “You too, sunbeam. Finish the water first though,” Mark mutters lightly when he feels Donghyuck squirm to get at the chocolate.

They lie with their chests pressed skin to skin for what feels like hours then, only interrupted by Donghyuck drinking water, and sharing the almonds between them. He lets Mark hand feed him, which makes Mark’s cheeks go red and Donghyuck’s smile come easier, and the world then feels like its axis has returned to its original state.

They’ve demolished most of the bag when Mark finally asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Donghyuck freezes, then squeezes around Mark’s torso as all his muscles tense and release. “Not really, but I know it helps, and you know I know it helps, so...”

“So I’ll keep bugging you nicely about it until you get upset and yell at me about it later.”

He sniffs. “And then I’ll feel better, and I’ll have to tell you that you’re right, and I hate that more than talking about it.”

Mark kisses his scrunched up nose. “Exactly. But take your time.”

Donghyuck does. Mark keeps strumming his ribcage and Donghyuck writes out what he wants to say on Mark’s stomach before he says it out loud, and they’re quiet.

“Work’s been tough lately,” Donghyuck starts off, and it’s barely more than a whisper. “Not like, for me, just in general. Changes and shifting. Normal.”

Silence hangs easy in the bedroom, and Mark lays another absent minded kiss to the top of Donghyuck’s head.

“And Jaemin is moving in with Renjun, you know? And I know it won’t like, change anything. But that’s big, and Taeil-hyung got engaged, and that’s big, and it’s all happy stuff. But I just.”

Mark feels Donghyuck ramping up again, and takes a deep breath in, filling his chest and lifting Donghyuck up with it. The shift gets Donghyuck’s attention, and he catches on quickly, following the pattern of Mark’s breathing after a minute.

“I woke up, and you weren’t here. And that was fine, until I looked at how messy the apartment was, and our pile of disgusting dishes, and all the food going bad in our fridge, and it was like.” Donghyuck mimics an explosion from the sides of his head, turning to rest his chin on Mark’s pec. “All of a sudden we weren’t measuring up, _I wasn’t_ measuring up. And I got tired and angry so I went back to bed and then, you know, instead of going to sleep I just. Got all up in my head about it. Spiralled. Started thinking things like you might find someone better for you at your basketball game, and that it would be a good idea if you did.”

“Hm,” Mark assesses.

“Yeah,” is all Donghyuck can say in response.

Using the hand no still stroking up and down Donghyuck’s side, Mark tucks a curler strand of hair behind Donghyuck’s ear. Slowly, deliberately, he presses his finger into each one of the moles that mark Donghyuck’s face. “And what do you think now, after everything.”

Donghyuck snorts and snaps his teeth at Mark’s retreating figure. “That I hate telling you your right.”

In retaliation, Mark sets his teeth gently on the button of Donghyuck’s nose, then kisses it. “Nope, you’ve already confessed to hating that once tonight. Try again.”

An over-dramatic sigh works its way out of Donghyuck as he rolls off of Mark to flop onto the empty mattress beside them. “That all that was just stress and anxiety talking, and none of that is really the case. And like, maybe if I tackled one small thing when I felt myself slipping, I might have come out of it with a halfway decent feeling of accomplishment.” He cuts a glance back to Mark, and rolls his eyes at the grin Mark is giving him. “Just like you said the last time this happened, and something similar to the time before that, and so on, _whatever_.”

“Man, I’m really smart, you’re super lucky to have me.”

Donghyuck kicks him weakly. “I’ll kill you, Mark Lee.”

Eventually, Mark gets up and let’s Donghyuck trail him limply into the kitchen while he reheats some leftovers. (“None of the food in here is bad, Hyuck-ah.” “Tell that to the cucumber in the crisper.” “Okay, a point was made.”) They take them back to the bedroom and eat like very lazy people who do not care about their sheets at all, and Donghyuck pulls the laptop over from his side of the bed to put on a few episodes of Kitten Rescuers for Mark to coo over.

As they’re hunkering down under the sheets — dishes stacked and returned to the kitchen by Mark, laptop closed and taken back to the desk by Donghyuck — Mark draws Donghyuck close and kisses all over his face. It makes Donghyuck chuckle out a fragile little sob and scrunch his nose, but Mark kisses those tears away too. “I love you, Donghyuck Lee. I’m blessed to have you in my life, and so are all the rest of our friends. We don’t move at the same pace as everyone else in our lives. I mean, shit, we don’t even move at the same pace as each other. We learn and we grow and we change and all of that is okay. We’ll figure it out together. I will _always_ be here for you.”

He says this last looking Donghyuck in the eye, and their eyes stay open when Donghyuck pushes forward to kiss Mark gently. “I know. _Thank you_.”

They sleep, and Donghyuck breathes evenly.

**Author's Note:**

> i had a bad day yesterday and wrote some emotional support ship blindly at 10:30pm before i went to bed. sometimes you write what you wish you had and that’s okay!
> 
> talk to me: [twitter](http://twitter.com/tayttimus) (personal) • twitter (writing) • [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/tayttimus) 💖


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